Turbo Video Stabilizer

How does image stabilization fix shaky videos and remove the jello effects?

What is Video Stabilization?

One of the most obvious differences between professional and amateur level video is the quality of camera motion; hand-held amateur video is typically shaky and undirected, while professionals use careful planning and equipment such as dollies or steadicams to achieve directed motion and stable videos. Such hardware is impractical for many situations, so digital video stabilization software is a widely-used and important tool for fixing shaky videos; especially from hand-held cellphones, digital Point-and-Shoot and Point-Of-View cameras which are much lighter and hence more susceptible to unwanted shakes.

There are several techniques to achieve video image stabilization. Video stabilization software typically works in three stages: camera motion estimation, motion smoothing or low-pass filtering, and video image warping. Here are the different approaches and state of the art in the world video stabilization software.

2D Stabilization

In this technique, 2D motion models are implemented by way of projective transforms to the video frames. Although 2D stabilization is fast and robust, the amount of video image stabilization it can provide is very limited. Unless the cameraman only moves either up-down, or left-right, two dimensional stabilization cannot account for the parallax errors created by full three dimensional camera motion in most practical environments.

Motion Inpainting

In this novel technique, full-frame stabilized videos are achieved by naturally filling in missing image parts by locally aligning image data of neighboring frames. To achieve this, motion inpainting is used to enforce spatial and temporal consistency of the completion in both static and dynamic video image areas. In addition, image quality in the stabilized video is enhanced with some deblurring algorithm. However, this technique will not be effective if there is a large motion that occupies the frame e.g. if it covers more than half of the video.

Optics

Another video stabilization method is via the optics of the camera rather than the camera body itself.

These systems work by moving the lens or sensor to compensate for small pitch and yaw motions. These techniques work in real time and do not require computation on the camera. However, they are not suitable for mobile devices due to the ultra slim form factor and tiny camera assembly and lens. In-device implementation of such optic-based compensation also increases the price of the device. Many of the Sony Steadyshot camcorders use this technique to stabilize video.

Microelectromechanical (MEMS) gyroscopes

MEM gyroscopes within a cellphone (e.g. iPhone 4) or camera can be used to measure camera rotations. These measurements are then used to perform video stabilization (inter-frame motion compensation) and rolling shutter correction (intra-frame motion compensation). This approach is robust but computationally expensive. Additionally, because camera rotations are primarily detected, they have limitations in situations where a specific camera translation path is desired. Another limitation of stabilizing video frame warping is that it produces areas for which there is no video image data, therefore video frames are cropped in order to hide or remove these empty areas. This operation reduces the field of view of the camera and also discards video data around frame boundaries, resulting in tighter shots and uneven video aspect ratios of the stabilized video.

3D Stabilization

Three dimensional video stabilization software techniques are the most advanced techniques used today in professional grade video editing software suites. These techniques best mimic the actual range of motion of a mounted camera on a moving object over rough terrain, such as your GoPro camera mounted on your race car or mountain biking helmet.

The muvee Turbo Video Stabilizer software uses a revolutionary 3D video stabilization engine which independently models the X, Y and Z camera axes and also analyzes the pitch, yaw and rotational moments in the camera motion. Its not only highly accurate, its also smart enough to know if a camera pan is intended, and hence does not over-compensate. What this means is that it strikes a balance between time consuming digital video stabilization calculations and the best video stabilization outcome for post-capture video images.

Last but not least, a post-production video stabilization treatment is ideal as it can be used anywhere, anytime and with almost any video, compared to in-device solutions. muvee Turbo Video Stabilization is the best digital video stabilization software for today’s active lifestyle and point of view cameras that go where no cameras have ever gone before.